[…] it is certain that, through the whole history of language since, the method has been in constant use: epithets of things, representing some one of their various attributes, become the names of things, through every department of nomenclature.
- Whitney (1875), a pag.83

Every exploring naturalist […] is all the time illustrating, in an openly reflective way, in his naming of species, the two principles which direct a great part of the world’s less conscious nomenclature.
- Whitney (1875), a pag.85

It is wont to be assumed by those who opposed the antecedence of the idea to the sign, that this opinion implies the elaboration by thinkers of a store of thoughts in advance and then the turning back and naming them by a conscious after-thought. Here is an inexcusably gross misrepresentation. There is implied rather that each act of nomenclature is preceded by its own act of conception; the naming follows as soon as the call for it is felt; even, it may be, before the need is realized […].
- Whitney (1875), a pag.139